The death of high fidelity

[vasyachkin]

Originally posted by Irakli


I thought compression was done as a final step of mastering (first you make a decent master and then you compress it).
But I guess life is more complicated.

my understanding is that compression is used at various stages in production. so you can compress an individual instrument before mixing them and then compress the entire mix too. then when playing the track on radio you compress the whole thing again before broadcasting etc.



actually compression is widely used even as a creative effect so to speak, not only to pack the track onto a medium such as CD or FM radio.

if compression was only a single final step you could easily undo it with a dynamic expander during playback ... but i think compression is just used left and right throughout the entire process

[spzzzzkt]

there is a pretty good article on [over] compression on Bob Katz's website...

http://www.digido.com/bob-katz/compression.html

well worth reading for a bit of insight into the view from recording end of the chain.

[Nigel Goodwin]

Originally posted by vasyachkin
[B]
my understanding is that compression is used at various stages in production. so you can compress an individual instrument before mixing them and then compress the entire mix too. then when playing the track on radio you compress the whole thing again before broadcasting etc.

One of my daughters bands did a recording of a song she had written, that was intended for use on a TV programme - they had filmed them playing it live, but wanted a studio recording as well.

They did the studio recording, and mastered down to two seperate tracks on the CD - one was normal CD dynamic range, and the other they mastered compressed for TV/radio broadcasting.

In the event the TV program over ran, and they cut their parts two days before transmission!

Still, it was an interesting experience being filmed by a professional team.

[fernando_g]

Compression has existed since the analog days, but it was followed by expanding the music at the listening side. The technique was employed to increase the overall dynamic range. True, it was far from perfect, there were pumping and breathing effects, but if done cautiously, one could gain a few dBs of range.
Some Dolby-ized tapes actually sounded pretty good.

Digital compression, IMHO, has been used mostly to increase the overall loudness.